Kerry Shook - Parenting With Honor
Hey, we're in this series on the "Power of Honor," as honor is the key to unlocking the blessings of God in your life, and dishonor blocks all the blessings that God wants to give you because he wants to bless you. And it all starts with honoring God by putting him first in your life. God says, "I will honor those who honor me". But honor is also the foundation for a strong marriage. Honor is the secret for a healthy relationship, and honor is the glue that holds societies together. A society is known by who they honor and what they honor. And we said last week, the word for honor in the Hebrew is the word "Kabod," and it literally means weight or heaviness.
So we honor someone when we give them weight, importance, and value. The Bible says in the fifth of the Ten Commandments, that children should honor their parents. And that's a really important commandment because it's the only one of the Ten Commandments that also gives a promise. It says, "Children, honor your parents so that everything will go well with you". You'll live a significant life that makes a difference for the long haul. So it's really important, and we're gonna talk about that at a later time and how to do that and honor your parents when you're a child, when you're grown, all those things, when they're gone to be with the Lord, how do you honor them? How do you honor good parents and parents that weren't so good? How do you honor your parents?
And so we're gonna talk about that at a later time, but I wanna flip the script today because the Bible also tells parents that you can honor your children by the way you parent. Parents can also dishonor their children by the way they parent. So this weekend, we're going to talk about, "Parenting with Honor," and if you're a parent raising children in this crazy culture, you're gonna be so encouraged by this message, and if you're not a parent, many of these principles really apply to all relationships, and God wants you to learn these principles, too, because every one of us is called to have an impact, on the lives of children and teenagers because they carry the hopes for the future, and there's no perfect parent but God, and even he has rebellious kids.
I know it's really hard being a parent in this culture. It's hard being a parent, but I want us to look at how Jesus honored children because we can learn so much from the Lord. Look at Mark chapter 10, beginning with verse 13. Would you stand in honor of God's Word and just follow along here? I love this passage, it really reveals so much about God. "Once when some mothers were bringing their children to Jesus to bless them, the disciples shooed them away, telling them not to bother him. But when Jesus saw what was happening, he was very much displeased with his disciples". You don't want to displease the God of the universe, but the disciples did. "And said to them," Jesus said to them, "Let the children come to me for the kingdom of God belongs to such as they. Don't send them away! I tell you, as seriously as I know how that anyone who refuses to come to God as a little child will never be allowed into his kingdom. Then he took the children into his arms, placed his hands on their heads, and he blessed them".
You can be seated. Some moms were trying to bring their children to Jesus so he could bless them, and this was something really important in Hebrew life. You see it all through the Old Testament, as dads would bless their children, and the way they would do it is that they would put their hands on their ears, not to box their ears but to hold their heads in a loving way, and then they would speak a positive future into them. "I Know God has a special purpose for you. I know that God is gonna guide you every step of the way, and God is gonna lift you up as you follow him". And did you know, dads, you should still do that today?
Just grab your child and speak a positive future into their life. That blessing is something that every child desperately craves, and you see it all through the Old Testament, is Abraham blessed Isaac and Isaac blessed Jacob and it's all about that blessing, picturing that future for them. And so these moms, they wanted Jesus, they wanted Jesus to bless their kids like that. But the disciples said, "He doesn't have time for kids, he doesn't have time for your kids. What are you doing? He's doing important things. He meets with important people. Don't you know how important Jesus is? And we gotta protect him, so, no, you're not gonna meet with Jesus, that's ridiculous".
And Jesus got wind of it, he overheard them, and he let the disciples have it. He said, "Don't you dare treat these children as if they have no importance or value or weight". He said, "I honor them and value them, and I'll tell you, unless you come to me with the humility of a child and you trust me to hold you in my arms and to take you to heaven one day, you'll never get there". I want us to look at what Jesus did and what his Word teaches us about how to parent with honor and give kids the weight and the value that they deserve. Well, first, honor them with your affection. They need your hugs and your high fives. Jesus understood how important this is for a child.
In Mark 10:16, it says, "He took the children into his arms, placed his hands on their heads, and he blessed them". I love the imagery of what happened there. Here is the God of the universe getting down on one knee and just grabbing those kids, laughing with them, playing with them, blessing them. Isn't that amazing to think about? And it shows me the kids weren't afraid of Jesus. I mean, he was so warm and welcoming. He placed such high value and importance on 'em, he got down on their level, he loved being with the kids because he valued them and honored them so much, and they weren't scared of Jesus. They may not have known that he was God himself, they just loved him. I'm sure later in their life as they realized, "Wow, I was hugged by God".
Man, I love God, he was, you know, Jesus was so amazing. He was so fun to be around, and so I know God is like that. God loves me. What a powerful thing. And by the way, the reason why Jesus came as a baby at Christmas, is because no one's afraid of a baby. He doesn't want you to be afraid of him, he wants you to have a relationship with him, a love relationship, and to know how much he loves you. Now, we're to fear God in that Hebrew sense, which means give God the awe and the respect and the weight and the importance that he deserves to honor God first in our lives because he demands and deserves it, but we need to know that God loves us and he wants to be in a love relationship with us. UCLA did a study where they found that, just for emotional, mental, and physical health, men and women need 8 to 10 meaningful touches a day.
Some of you parents are going, "I'm not the affectionate type". Who cares what you are, it's what they need. You break through. I've known many parents, including my own, that weren't raised with affection, but they just decided they weren't gonna pass that on, and they broke through with God's power. You hug them anyway, you honor them with affection, then you honor them with words. Proverbs 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit". He's saying that when you realize how powerful your words are, then you'll eat its fruit, then you'll use those words. Because you love your kids, you'll use those words and realize how powerful they are to launch them into their future. Words are powerful, they can build up or tear it down.
And by the way, a feeling of love is really worthless unless you express it through a touch, a word, or an action, because love is not a feeling, love is an action. It becomes love when it turns into a touch, a word, or an action, that's when it's love. I read a story about a teenager who had a very obvious birthmark over much of his face, and yet it never seemed to bother him. He was one of the most confident and outgoing kids in his high school, and one day a teacher who really liked him and admired him asked him if his birthmark had ever bothered him. And the young man said, "When I was really little, my dad told me I had the birthmark for two reasons. He said, the first reason was because an angel had kissed me there".
And he said, "The second reason was the angel did that so my dad could always find me in a crowd". And he said, "My dad just told me that over and over again when I was little, so much so that I started to actually feel sorry for the other kids who didn't get a kiss from the angel". I mean, words are powerful. Early on, through the teenage years, when they're grown, those words are powerful. I saw a study that showed 85% of all third graders had a strong self-esteem. When they did the same test at the beginning of junior high, the figure dropped to 65%. And when they tested the graduating seniors in high school, it dropped to only 5% of them, had a strong self-esteem.
Our society tries to tear down our kids. That's why it's so important, parents, for you to build them up with your words. And we need to, we need to build each other up with words, to build up instead of tear down, and I tell you, the only way you can really build them up is to get into their world. You gotta get right down in their world like Jesus did. He got right down on those children's level, he didn't just talk down to them. I mean, so many important people in Jesus's day like the religious leaders, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, I mean, I'm sure the kids were scared of them, and in that culture, kids weren't very important. You just ignored them.
But look at John 1:14. It says, "The Word became human and lived among us". God wanted us to know how much he loved us so much that he left his perfect world of heaven, and came down into our broken world, so that we could see what God is like and so that we could really understand him and he could communicate his love to us, because otherwise, we would just know that God is powerful through his creation, but it's through Christ we know that God loves us because he had to come into our world to become one of us so we could understand him, so he could speak our language, so he could be human and go through all the things that we go through. And parents, to love your kids the way they need to be loved, you have to get into their world.
So you honor them with your affection, you honor them with your words, and you honor them with loving discipline, and it's really important. In Proverb 13:24, it says, "If you refuse to discipline your son, it proves you don't love him; for if you love him, you'll be prompt to punish him". It's honoring to provide loving boundaries and to discipline your children. It's dishonoring and unloving when you fail to discipline and correct your kids. Insecure children will push against boundaries to see if they exist. They'll push against those protective fences that you've set up, just to see if they're there, and when they find that they are there, then they feel secure. Your kids will push against your rules whether they're 1 or 17, and once they do and you don't give in, it makes them feel secure.
Now, your 17-year-old is never gonna come up to you and go, "Thank you, Mom and Dad, for telling me no. You tell me no a lot, and every time I appreciate it more. It makes me feel so secure that you never give in. I just want to commend you. Atta-boy, Dad, great job". You know, I've talked to parents who say, "Well, I laid out my rules, but my teenager hates them and is rebelling against them". And I wanna go, "Oh, really? Never heard of that before. That's a surprise".
I think a lot of parents today are trying to be their teenager's best friend. I don't know if they're trying to relive their high school days, their glory days or what, but they're trying to be their teenager's best friend, and I want you to know, your teenager has got enough friends, they need you to be the parent that God has called you to be, that's what they need. They need a parent who will love them and honor them enough to not give in. It's no fun when your kid hates you for a while, but if you want a chance of being their best friend when they're grown, you have to love them enough to let them hate you for a while.
I wanna share with you, though, three things that dishonor kids in this area. First is indulgence. Indulgence is dishonoring. And Hebrews 12:6 it says, "The Lord disciplines those he loves". And so whenever I'm going the wrong direction and it becomes really painful and I hit this place where it just really hurts and, you know, it's discipline from the Lord because he allows the discipline to turn me around because he knows I'm on a destructive path, that he loves me too much to let me go down that path. The Lord disciplines his kids, and wherever you find God's discipline in your life, that pain in your life, just know it confirms you're a child of God because he doesn't discipline those that aren't his kids, that haven't chosen him into their lives.
And whenever you see that discipline, rejoice that you're a child of God and he does it because he loves you so much, he doesn't want you to go down the wrong path. And parents, if you love your kids, you won't let them do whatever they want to. Whenever you indulge your kids by never telling them no and thinking your job is to meet their every need and whim, eventually they feel totally unloved. Even if you love them so much, there's unintended consequences when you don't follow God's Word, and when you indulge them, eventually they're gonna feel unloved because it teaches them that you don't believe in them, and that makes them feel unloved, that they can't do anything.
And by the way, I've seen today a lot of parents get their priorities all mixed up. And what I mean by that is, God says, you honor me first, then you honor your marriage and you work on your marriage, then your kids are the third priority if you have kids, that's the third priority, and then the fourth is your career, and it goes like that, and many parents, though, flip it around and their kids are the CEO of the family. They just do what the kids want, what the kids say and it starts when they're two years old. If you're not careful, that two year old will take over and you're done. And it's like we're running around, you know, doing whatever they want, and when they start to cry, we gotta give 'em whatever they want, and man, it's so hard because, you know, we're just working for this CEO and he's two years old.
And a lot of parents think that's their job. No, the best thing they need to see is a godly marriage, a strong marriage. You better work on your marriage first because that's the priority that will help you be a better parent. You work on your marriage first, and you take time for each other, and you put those boundaries in your life. But then there's a second thing that dishonors your kids, and that's overprotection. One of the most important jobs of a parent is to work yourself out of a job. That's your job, to work yourself out of a job, and you do that by teaching them responsibility and maturity as they grow 'cause as a baby, they have no responsibility, zero responsibility, they can't do anything, and so you're 100% responsible for them to meet all their needs. But by the time they're 18, the goal is they've learned to be responsible enough to go out on their own.
Now, they'll still have a lot to learn in the school of hard knocks so that they can mature and grow in their character, but when we always rescue our kids and overprotect them, it keeps them from maturing. Overprotection is a form of rejection because it says, "I believe you're incompetent". Now, many parents who overprotect, it usually comes out of just great love, but it's not perceived as love over time, because whenever you get outside of God's Word, there's unintended consequences, and that consequence will be they will believe what you're showing them, that they're incompetent. Another thing that's destructive and dishonoring to kids is rules without relationship, rules without relationship.
Some of you grew up in homes that were really strict, where your parents laid down the law and they stuck to the rules, which is good, but they didn't really connect with you in warmth and love. They were disciplined but distant, and the Bible talks about this in Ephesians 6:4. It says, "And now a word to you parents. Don't keep on scolding and nagging your children, making them angry and resentful. Rather bring them up with the loving discipline the Lord himself approves".
Loving discipline, focus on those two words, loving discipline. The Bible says "You need to love and discipline". And really, the two are so enmeshed together, it's hard to separate them. They go together. If it's always just rules and discipline, and no love, no fun, no connection, your kids will get resentful, I promise you that. If not in the teenage years, when they leave your home, it's like, "I'm done with that," because they didn't feel any warmth and connection and love that went along with those rules. That's like religion, and Jesus always condemned religion. Religion is just a bunch of rules and regulations. The Pharisees, they took the Ten Commandments and added about 640 other things to them, and they didn't follow 'em themselves because nobody could, but they would always judge others.
There was no warmth, connection, love, and grace. Just follow all these rules, and in some families, it becomes like that, there's no affection and connection and caring and fun. It all meshes together. So you honor them with your affection, you honor them with your words, you honor them with loving discipline, and you honor them by leading them to Jesus. The first three, you know, God uses that so powerfully because his Word always works, but without the fourth one, then you're not making an eternal difference. So the fourth one is really the most important, and you do that by really modeling Christ's life in front of them. You do that by, you'll never be perfect, you'll make mistakes, but when you do, you just say, "Hey, I blew it, forgive me".
You know, some parents say, "Well, I just leave all the spiritual decisions up to them, I want them to decide what they wanna do. You know, when it comes to spiritual things, I want them to make those decisions". And there's a theological word for that: dumb. That's about the dumbest thing you can do. It's like, "I'm just gonna let my kid choose when they go to bed, I'm just gonna let them choose whatever they eat, I'm just gonna let them come and go as they please, they're only four, but it's no big deal". No, you get them to church, it's your responsibility, you make it a priority, it's your responsibility. It's your responsibility. God places those children in your life as a reward. They're not really yours, they're God's, and you're just a steward of them for a very short time.
You steward those kids that aren't really yours, but you steward them with love and you lead them to Jesus, you point them to Jesus. That's the most important thing that you could do, and you do it with your life. You show them with your life what it means. You show them that church is important. Hey, we're here. You know, I mean, we make it a priority, and they know that the church is important. They know their spiritual life is really important. It's the most important thing. You're not just out doing ball for two years and you're never at church. You know, the chances of them being a major league player are slim to none, but the chance that they're gonna stand before God one day is a 100%.
And so Deuteronomy 6:7 says this, it says, this is just the way it should be in your lifestyle. That you talk about God, you pray and say, "Hey, how can I pray for you today"? "You know, well, you know, in the ballgame today, I've got..." "Okay, God, just held 'em in the ballgame today". "Got this test". "God, just help 'em in the test today". It's just real simple stuff, but God is just part of it, and that's what it says in Deuteronomy 6:7, "You must teach them to your children and talk about them when you're at home or out for a walk; at bedtime and the first thing in the morning". And maybe you've never really made God a big part of your life, but now you've come to know Christ, you're putting him first, and you're a parent, and you wanna do that with your kids, just start practicing it. It'll start coming.
Just say, "Hey, can I pray for you"? "God, just help them". "Hey, What's going on in your life? Let's make sure we're at church". All these things start coming together, it's just part of your life, it's not a big spiritual deal, it just comes part of your life, and that is all about honoring God first. You honor God first and God honors you, and he gives you the wisdom to start honoring your kids and doing the things that you need to do. Many people ask us, "How'd your kids turn out like this"? And I always say, "It's just the grace and mercy of God. You don't know the story of how it could have gone a lot of different ways a lot of different times, but God in his grace and mercy and their mom made all the difference".
But I can tell you a huge factor. One of the biggest factors was our student pastors in student ministry because here's the deal, we discovered that when they become teenagers, they don't tell mom and dad their struggles anymore, but our kids would tell the student pastors, and they would have that student ministry of kids around them, trying to go the right direction, that were honest about their struggles and want to follow God, and I'm telling you, without our student pastors and our student ministry, you know, it had been really tough, there's no way, and I praise God for the student ministry. I praise God for this pre-school, children, and student ministry, that we put the resources in because we believe this generation is gonna change the world.
We're raising up the next generation, but I'm telling you, your kids don't need a lot of friends going the right direction, but they've gotta have a few hanging around them, and we got a thousand students, teenagers in our student ministry, and they find a few friends that they connect with, that are going the right direction, it makes all the difference in the world. You honor God by putting him first. Proverbs 3:9-10 says, one of the ways that we honor God, it says, "Honor the Lord by giving him the first part of all your income, and he will fill your barns with wheat and barley and overflow your wine vets with the finest wines". Really, it comes down to honoring the Lord with your time, honoring the Lord in your relationships, and honoring the Lord with your income because when your kids see that, they know it's real.